The Face of a Barber
by Gilly.Flowers
Summary: "Got t' tell you a story."
1. Chapter 1

On the discovery of a mutual ends, they conjoined rigorously to seek by which means they might finally grasp their desires. They spoke in dire voices that excited and enticed. They planned their actions step by step, calculating each foot that landed in front of the other. They assured themselves that two minds were better than one.

Until finally, all their actions become habit.

Should Anthony find himself anywhere other than his customary seat in the Tonsorial Parlour, as he brings in the night as its shepherd, he feels utterly disarmed.

He'd be restless and shamble aimlessly through the streets of the city, jittering through the parks; his face would be dim with anguish as he gazed upon the couple who found bareness in each-other; their noses mere inches apart, their souls even closer.

Without the large, humbling window pressing against his cheek, freezing him in a mirror realm, where everything was yellow, Anthony failed to bare the weight of his grey reality.

The two men shared their evenings for nearly two months. Hardly any sort of opportunistic advantage befell their underground effort. On the top floor of the pie shop they manage to brew a poignant air of bitterness and befuddlement.

The gas lights high on the wall hissed, spitting out its meager flame. The room stood still. The wood creaked with rodent activity, as per usual to the poorer establishments.

The customary quiet blanketed the spinning worlds inside Anthony and Mr. Todd's head. Their customary hour together seeped, till the moment the first clutch of stars break through space.

The hairs rose on the back of his neck. They tell his body it's time to leave.

He stood, his lips parting immediately to chance a verbal interaction with the barber.

"Shall I tell you a story, lad?"

His voice surprised him; he wouldn't lie, it severely surprised him. Anthony paused attentively, fixing his eyes on Sweeney's, as the older man was suddenly looking at him.

"Shall I tell you a story, lad?" He asked, his words stripped raw of moisture.

A little terrified, Anthony relaxed his footing to one more conducive to active listening, and said, "What story is it, Mr. T?"

Sweeney evenly stepped around his chair and sat on the red cushions. The vanity mirror appeared to have shrunk without a body filling it.

"It's" his lungs clenched, halting its mandatory process. He forced himself to continue, "it's about a lonely widow. Who lived by herself."

Well, that was a powerful beginning... Anthony nodded his head in flowering interest and obediently sat in his seat. Yes, he did indeed want to hear Sweeney's dystopian tale.

The old barber was silent. He was seeped inside his memory, trapped within his own talons. Anthony averted his blue eyes to the dust-swept floorboards.

Beneath them Mrs. Lovett began to hum, her voice filtering through the cracks in the wood in a distant whisper. Her boots thumped a steady pentameter, and Anthony guessed after a hefty clang, that she was putting her evening pies into the oven.

Her deep melodies accentuated Mr. Todd's story chillingly.

"The widow's husband was poor."

Anthony gently closed his fists. He knew a thing or two about poverty.

And so Mr. Todd wove his story into Anthony's mind, smoothening the edges with brief, choked recounts of the smiles that never left the wife and her husband's face even when they slept. He gasped the death of her husband. He swore that he died, too soon, in the worst way imaginable.

Anthony gazed upon the slim stretch of Sweeney's face that his position allowed. The barber appeared to the impressionable sailor almost as if beneath his skin was a labyrinth of clockwork. His muscles were distinctive, tense, his jaw sporadically grinding in agitation.

"The widow is crushed like a flower, withering in the cold absence of her husband, his body no longer sleeping next to hers, his arms no longer around her, his eyes... Brown, they would never smile at her again. Can you see her face?"

Anthony nodded his head. He could. He could. He knew her face, but the sand was slipping through his fingers.

Still, Mrs. Lovett hummed.

"She was sick, deranged and blinded by these irreconcilable tears. She's helpless, a woman with no income, no one to bare her sadness with."

A man whose lusted after her for years suddenly swings down upon her, like a bird of prey. They say he lied to her. Got her to follow him into the dark. He wasted her."

He raped her."

The hairs on the back of his neck were disturbed in a shiver. The words hit him devastatingly, shredding him to pieces. It was the ugliest sentence he had ever heard.

The shop below was gravely silent.

Mr. Todd breathes in, "she shatters."

Anthony felt the world freeze as he sat, bravely processing the tale. He stared, extremely pitiful, at the barber's rigged profile.

"Sir, you're a profound story teller." He spoke solemnly. He was careful to soothe rather than aggravate his elder.

Sweeney swallowed. He flew, disoriented, through a cloud of euphoria, the weight of his story lifted off his shoulders, his pain weakened.

"An old wives tale my mother told me when I was a child." He grumbled, blinking.

Anthony exhaled a stressed laugh.

"She wasn't a very kind lady, to tell a child that fable."

The two shared a dark, light chortle.


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N. Ah, this one was harder to write than the first one. Which is probably why I went backwards with this small storyline, lmao! I knew it even before I began that I was gonna have trouble with Mrs. Lovett. That trouble-maker baker!**

 **So, just so u know, this chapter is set a purple of days before chapter one, instead of Sweeney and Anthony its Mr T. And Mrs. L. Pls enjoy for emjoyment's sake, R &R, have a wonderful day! -Gillies **

**p.s. I'm currently brewing a cool Halloween-ish Sweenett so look out! I really like it so far!**

She had since noticed that they stayed close on days like this;

Fleet Street was lined with parasols and quickly moving bodies, slicing through the frothy mist. Black humanoid shapes careered past the windows and hesitated before leaving the safety of the over-hang. The sun was no where to be seen. Thick rain sieged war upon the cobble roads and passersby so unlucky to be out that night.

The world closed in on a barber during a very common London downpour. It tightened a slash around his throat, swatted potential customers (target practise) away with its cruel wet bite, and subsequently willed his fingers to flip his sign to its other, darker face, CLOSED. He hated it. He hated how it controlled him so easily. On rainy days there was no running from the past. It sat with you, filling the room until you can't even breathe.

He shuffled about in his shop for a minute or two, ravaged by his cold memories. Then he retreated, defeated to Mrs. Lovett's.

Inside the pie shop Mrs. Lovett happily regaled his evening with care and caress, lavishly, selflessly warming him both physically and, dare she humour herself, emotionally.

She knew to expect, on a rainy day. He was reliable in that way. She waited, assured, for him to take the trip down the stairs and beg her to distract him.

And that wasn't their fault; they needed each other for many things, and underneath a depression of grey clouds and the crackling of thunder, it was impossible to deny.

She fed him. She listened with her whole heart to his short, brief sentences. They spent the evening brushing away each other's loneliness and fear.

They huddled close, bringing in the sombre night time.

The street lay barren. The sky squeezed out a spattering of drops here and there, coughing them up after its long pour. The slick stones glowed and sparked with the brazen gold light from the lamps.

"Mr. T."

He found her eyes boring into him, looking misty, and helpless. He struggled against the visceral need to evade her all-knowing stare. He found himself too overcome by the emotion in her searching to sever this rare connection. He questioned her, silently; pleading for her to go on and dismantle it herself.

Her jaw lay in the palm of her hand. Her face was tilted to him from across the table, bearing her skinny neck and prying apart the gaping outline of her bodice. Rusted, brown hair tickled her eyes, eyes lurking in his.

"Got t' tell you a story." She peeped, in a small pathetic voice.

The story has plagued Mrs. Lovett's mind for days now, eating away at her sanity, demanding to be told. It's no coincidence she found the strengthen to have this fleshy conversation during a storm.

"..What is it?"

Mrs. Lovett dropped her gloved hand on the bottle of gin, grasping at the cork. "Drinks, first."

Sweeney exploited the cease of their contact to roll his eyes without repercussions.

Two glasses gurgled as they filled with the revered, pungent liquid.

Sweeney examined Mrs. Lovett's work, rising the offered glass level with his eye, and then drank. Mrs. Lovett did the same.

She wiped the edge of her mouth. "It's abou' Lucy."

Mrs. Lovett barrelled on ferociously, disregarding his betrayed expression. She tunnelled through the seize in his throat at that single name. Her name.

"I lied to you, Mr. T. The judge didn't sweep in an' carry Johanna away like what I said... You must remember Lucy, 'ow she 'ad no real skills, least not the sort for a job. She was dainty and weak," The baker wrestled against her snarled lips, softening the bite she slipped into that word, _weak_. She hated Lucy for her weakness.

She was bitterly aware that had she been weak, she'd be dead too. Perhaps sooner, because nobody ever handled her like fine glass, as the world seemed to handle Lucy since birth. If Mrs. Lovett had been weak like Lucy, she'd never make it to where she was now, beside Sweeney Todd.

"After Benjamin Baker went away the money left from 'is savings dwindled almost instantaneously. Like sand through 'er bony fingers. Albert was dead too; it was expensive enough running the shop and the butchery wit' only me doing it all. Lucy could barely feed 'er self let alone nurture 'er baby. And with the lack of income it was either both 'er and the baby starve to death - or she gives 'er up, Mr. T."

Sweeney tilted the glass against his lips, gulping greedily. "What are you saying?"

Mrs Lovett graciously poured out another glass for him. Her eyes upholstered him with their faint sheen of wetness. His baker was in as much pain as he. She must have truly loved Lucy like he did.

For some evasive reason that steadied him.

"One day Lucy says she can't do it no more. I was in 'ere, and she didn't come down the tenant staircase. I saw 'er leave through the window, carrying Jo... 'Twas the last time I saw 'er. Lucy comes home and tells me, stone faced, that th' baby is gone, and that she doesn't want me t' bother 'er anymore. I didn't know where Johanna was til a couple months after Lucy..."

Mrs. Lovett stared at the barber in fear, waiting for a murderous roar, a rampaging swing of his razor. She in all her panic was met with even silence.

"Are you okay, love?" She asked. She crouched to catch his gaze. "I begged the girl to let me 'elp her, I did. I offered her all the money what I 'ad, and it weren't a lot Mr. T. After Albert died I was as well off as 'er, maybe a little better maybe worse. She refused me time an' time again, just like you in that way - stubborn, full of pride. She wouldn't take my money even if it meant keeping Johanna. I couldn't make her 'old on to life like I wanted her too. It's one of my biggest regrets. If I could do it over - try _harder_ -"

She closed her mouth, almost shaking. It was obvious to the baker that she couldn't rely on him to stop her before she said too much, as he usually did, and that frightened her to the bone.

"Sweeney?"

Mrs. Lovett reached her pale hand across the table, watching his lip for its customary sneer, praying it never appeared as she firmly clasped her hand over his. He remained still, ghost-like after such a drastic story.

"no." His voice broke free, his eyes pierced through her.

"Huh? Sweeney do you want to be alone?"

He shook his head. He swallowed a massive lump. "No. Thank you for telling me."

Mrs. Lovett stayed close to him, in shock for the rest of the night.


End file.
